The art of tango dancing at its best is a means for
conscious evolution of the practitioner. In this section I explain what I mean
by conscious evolution and how tango dancing can function as a means for it.

-Consciousness can be seen as the patterning
of matter and energy.

-Evolution by natural selection no longer
functions among humans.

-There is evidence for the existence of
other mechanisms of evolution.

-Conscious choice more than ever before
determines the direction of development of our species.

-There is therefore a need to consciously
chart our own development as individuals and as a species.

-Each human being is capable of knowing
the direction of conscious evolution in the given circumstances. The main
“sensor” of the direction is one’s “heart”, one’s experience of bliss.

-There is research showing the relation
between happiness and the so-called “flow” states.

-In order to engage meaningfully and
consistently in a “flow” activity, it must be sensibly instrumental for one’s
conscious evolution.

-An evolutionary activity or interaction
is the one practiced specifically for the purpose of blissful experiences and
the evolution of one’s consciousness.

-In order to be functional, an
evolutionary activity must have certain essential features.

-Some cultures of the past intuitively
recognized good evolutionary activities and their cultural significance.

-There are many aspects of tango dancing
which make it a good evolutionary activity.

-Tango has been therapeutic and has
helped the development of my consciousness in a variety of ways.

-In order for the evolutionary potential
of tango to manifest, the right approach is necessary.

TANGO AND CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

“True happiness is the
happiness of growth.”

Pierre Teillard de Chardin

At its best, tango is an instrument of cultural
progress, of conscious evolution of human beings. In my opinion, any artistic
practice brings the highest joy and attains the greatest meaning for the
practitioner if it is instrumental for the development of consciousness. The
way that I try to practice tango dancing is based on this fundamental
principle. For this reason, I feel that I must explain it here in more detail,
though it may seem a bit too abstract for some tastes.

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to talk about,
even to define. At this point, science has come to see the world as made up of
the same basic “stuff” – matter or energy – organized in a great variety of
patterns. In this light, I believe that the most general way to see
consciousness is thatwhich patterns matter/energy. Some
people would hesitate to call the forces that pattern interactions of
elementary particles consciousness, but on the spectrum between an atom and a
human being there is a point where most people would agree that patterning
becomes much more of a consciousness, such as in the case of animal behavior.
Reflective consciousness is a special kind of patterning which also patternsitself,
its environment, and does who knows what else. This means that
patterning/consciousness can either be “unconscious” – unaware of itself, or
“conscious”, or aware of its own patterning activity. Here the difficulty with
the term “consciousness” is evident. I would like to call it “patterning”
instead – this way we can clearly distinguish between conscious and unconscious
patterning. In this section, I use “consciousness” and “patterning”
interchangeably.

Even unconscious patterning is not quite like a
computer program – it constantly changes, new patterns are born all the time. A
tree, for example, is a complex pattern of organic compounds and processes,
which unravels in both space and time, in some relation to other patterns
around it. Every tree is an unprecedented event – no two trees are the same.
Moreover, there was a time when trees did not exist on earth, and then they
came about somehow, whether by natural selection or by Divine inspiration. How
or why consciousness develops is a huge question in both philosophy and
science, but the fact that it does is undeniable.

A human being seems to represent the most
sophisticated form of consciousness on earth, possessing a working faculty of reflection
– the patterning of mentalimages. Humans are able
to recognize patterns and make mental images of them. But that also enables us
to change existing patterns deliberately, as well as create new
patterns altogether, both in our minds and in our environment. We have the
notorious freedom of choice, or free will, which can feel like both a blessing
and a curse. Because of the capacity for conscious choice, reflective
consciousness is by its very nature also creative consciousness. By evolution
of consciousness I mean the emergence of more and more complex and
sophisticated patterns of matter and energy. By conscious evolution I
mean the deliberate creation of new patterns by human beings, as well as
a directed development of their very patterning ability.

With the emergence of reflective/creative
consciousness, the whole process of evolution becomes aware of itself. In
general, I see what is referred to as “biological evolution” as part of the
evolution of consciousness – the patterning of matter and energy. But even if one
prefers to separate biological evolution from the evolution of consciousness,
one can see clearly that humans are increasingly able to tamper with both. For
example, our present culture has effectively cancelled natural selection in our
species. We are not denying anybody reproductive rights, we are fighting to
save the lives of the sick and the disadvantaged, and all our mechanisms of
adjustment to the natural environment are not individual but cultural, and are
increasingly shared by all. As a result, whatever may be new advantageous
traits of our species are not propagating genetically as they do in the animal
world. Natural selection is ruled out, so other paths of evolution become
prominent. One of such paths is the change through “use or disuse or habit”,
which Darwin himself cites in his famous “The Origin of Species” – instincts
which find frequent use throughout the life of an individual persevere, while
the ones which are used rarely tend to fade in the successive generations. (See
chapter 7 in “The Origin of Species”.) The mechanism of this is not yet
understood by science, but ample evidence of it exists. Allan Combs cites the
following findings in his book “The Radiance of Being – Complexity, Chaos, and
the Evolution of Consciousness”:

“For instance, in the early years of this [20th] century, one of the founders of American psychology, William
McDougall of Harvard University, discovered quite by chance that untrained rats
were quick to learn a task (escaping from a water maze) previously acquired by
many earlier generations of rats of the same strain. These findings were
strikingly confirmed several years later in both Scotland and Australia when
researchers discovered that untrained rats picked up the task almost
immediately. The great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, best known in the west
for his studies of conditioned reflexes in dogs, observed a similar effect when
he trained several generations of white mice to run to a feeding station at the
sound of a bell. While the first generation required about three hundred trials
to learn the task, the second generation required only about one hundred
trials. The third and fourth generations learned in thirty and ten trials
respectively!”

For humans, this means that our choices of activity
largely determine the direction of our evolution – we can choose to use or not
use some of our capacities, which leads to either their further development or
their gradual fading. Is this a good thing? Was it right to abolish natural
selection among our ranks? Yes, for it is a morality which capitalizes on free
will, which lets individuals determine the course of their own development,
and, ultimately, of the overall cultural progress. Favorable behaviors and
traits are increasingly determined by conscious choice rather than by survival
challenges, which means that selection becomes more and more cultural.

As we recognize our freedom of choice, as we create
freer societies, it becomes increasingly important to understand how to choose,
how to change existing patterns, how to create new ones. With more freedom
comes more of a need to chart our own course, both as societies and as
individuals. There arises the question of a general direction: which change,
which choice is best? This question is so difficult to us so far, so tremendous
is the responsibility to chart our further development, that as a culture we
still prefer to evade it altogether. The half-conscious popular belief is that
by pursuing survival, sustenance, and procreational concerns we automatically
develop ourselves in the right direction. A sober examination reveals that we
have no reason to believe this given that we have abolished natural selection
among our ranks.

A fundamental belief which I came to eventually was
that the knowledge of the direction of conscious evolution is inherent somehow
in each human being. (This includes the belief that a general direction of
conscious evolution exists, though it may vary somewhat depending on a particular
individual or a specific time in cultural history.) Just like each tree somehow
“knows” which way is up and tries to grow in that general direction, reflective
consciousness “knows” which way it wants to develop and constantly looks for
ways to do it. However, this knowledge is not explicit to begin with. It is
rather a capacity to know, which itself can be developed so that it becomes
progressively clearer. As many have recognized throughout the ages, the
knowledge of what is “right” or “good” for one to do in life grows from the heart
– our emotional center. The heart touches both the mental and the instinctual,
is aware of both our more animalistic past and our more aware future, and is
able to recognize the most harmonious interaction between the two. Bliss, joy,
love, happiness, beauty are all emotional indicators that we are developing in
the right direction as conscious beings. This is why more and more people are
unable to be content with just satisfying survival and sustenance concerns, and
are on a quest for a higher meaning and happiness in their lives.

Roughly speaking, happiness and meaning can come from
either the achievement of certain goals which are perceived as worthwhile, or
from engaging in an activity which gives joy in and of itself – the “autotelic”
experience. But if we look closely, we will find that these two aspects usually
go together: each enjoyable activity has certain inherent goals, while
achieving even the greatest objectives in life does not bring lasting happiness
if one does not enjoy the process of working towards them. However, the
emotional response, the bliss, the joy, is something that happens in the present.
This means that the improvement of the process, the cultivation of supreme states
of being is, in fact, the highest goal. It makes sense from the point
of view of conscious evolution: true growth is the improvement of one’s
creative/patterning ability, which manifests in every passing moment, and in all of
one’s interactions, not just through several landmark achievements in a narrow
field. I feel that we are gradually starting to understand this, for it seems
that “doing what you love” is getting as important to people as “saving the
world”. Saving the world is crucial, of course – if the world is not saved, if
people cannot survive, they cannot do what they love, either. But more and more
people are sensing the possibility that we can eventually live in a stable
enough natural, economical, and political environment, and then it really
becomes about heightening of one’s experience, attaining ever more intense and
elevated states of being, creating an ever higher beauty, developing an ever
greater capacity for love. Socio-economic structures must be constantly
improved in such a way as to allow the individuals to “do what they love” and
develop themselves freely, for it is the individual development that drives the
development of the culture and ultimately the whole of humanity. The search for
one’s bliss actually becomes a responsibility – by pursuing one’s own
happiness, one is also charting the course of development for others, inspiring
others to “follow their bliss”, in the words of Joseph Campbell.

What is an elevated state of being? What is a more
blissful experience? We know it when we are having it, but can we purposely
create and grow such states? Can we generalize anything about them, or is it
entirely personal? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was very interested in
such questions and dedicated many years to the study of people who said they
were generally happy. He wrote a popular book about his findings called “Flow –
The Psychology of Optimal Experience”. He found that a general sense of
well-being was most often brought about by a regular activity in which
so-called “flow” states were achieved. The activities ranged from rock climbing
to working a conveyer belt to running a farm in the French Alps, but the flow
experiences in all those cases had some common attributes:

“First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a
chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are
doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task
undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts
with a deep but effortless involvement which removes from awareness the worries
and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to
exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self
disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow
experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered;
hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The
combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so
rewarding people feel like expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile
simply to be able to feel it.”

Possibly the most important feature of a flow state is
that there is a “blurring of lines between oneself and something bigger, or other than
oneself”. Though one is making choices, most of them are spontaneous
responses to the incoming sensory information; perception of existing patterns
and creation of new ones are in a harmonious balance. The book described some
fascinating people, all of whom seemed to have a talent for producing flow
states regularly. As their skills improved through experience, they intuitively
transformed their experience in just the right ways so as to produce more
intense states of flow. But the book did not talk enough about developing one’s
capacity
for flow if one did not have it naturally, how to create and, most importantly,
intensify states of flow.

Many people nowadays perceive the value of “following
one’s bliss”. But not many are actually able to do it. Pursuits of one’s choice
often seem out of reach, or one simply cannot find anything to be passionate
about. In my younger years, I tried many different “extra-curricular”
activities, but abandoned most of them shortly because of boredom or
frustration. Tango was the first thing that I fell in love with for any decent
period of time. I was crazy enough about it to drop everything else and become
a tango professional. At that time, I seemed to be one of the few who were able
to find and follow their passion. But even in tango I eventually ran into a
wall. After about 5 years, I started getting frustrated with my lack of
progress, my enjoyment of the dance began to fade. I was again caught between
boredom with what I could do and frustration with my inability to do more or
better. Fortunately for myself, I sensed that there was something wrong with my
approach, and did not abandon tango for yet another pursuit.

Eventually, I realized that what had been missing was
the connection between my particular passions and my overall development as a
self-aware human being. I saw that neither “art for the audience”, nor “art for
its own sake” were correct paradigms. It is rather “art as a means of conscious
evolution”. Reflective consciousness develops itself in interactions
with other reflective and non-reflective consciousness that surrounds it. The
most meaningful and enjoyable pursuits are the ones which somehow serve a more
general conscious evolution of both the individual and the culture. I saw that
some activities were more related to conscious evolution than others. Moreover,
the same activity could be made more or less evolutionary by one’s approach to
it. In other words, even though our main compass in our development is our
bliss, a blind search for it often runs into a dead end. We must understand
some general principles of what opens up the channels for at once higher
enjoyment and growth. It may be that a healthy enough individual evolves and
achieves ever higher states of being naturally, but if it is not happening by
itself, we must discover what is blocking it. In my experience, most people
feel fairly blocked in their growth, and sense that there is not enough
positive change in their lives. Dissolving such blocks is best done through
awareness, and the best way to become aware of them is to take up an evolutionary
activity of one’s liking and try to achieve an ever higher mastery,
ever higher states of flow in it.

What is an “evolutionary activity”? It is the one that
lets one effectively evolve one’s consciousness – develop one’s ability to
respond to existing patterns and create new ones. It is always some kind of an interaction
with existing patterns of consciousness, whether natural or human-made. An
interaction is evolutionary if it ends up developing one’s consciousness in
some generally desirable directions, if a particular activity opens to the
practitioner deeper principles of conscious interactions in general. Here are some
essential features of a good evolutionary activity or interaction, in my view.

-Since the main “compass” in our development is bliss,
a good evolutionary activity must have as its main goal a heightened state of
being, a beautiful experience of the practitioner, an ever more intense flow.
This is why many of the existing arts turn out to be good
evolutionary activities – in most pure art, the beauty of experience is
the highest goal. Our very understanding of the word “arts” is somewhat
connected with our progress as human beings, which is why many activities which
are not seen as art in general begin to be called “art” when taken to a very
high level. However, a wrong approach to art can forfeit its evolutionary
potential. Much art nowadays is corrupted by creating it primarily for the
audience. To see or hear great art can be very inspiring, but only if it
represents a highly evolved state of being of the artist. If an artist caters
to the expectations of an audience more than to his conscious evolution, he
misses the point. For this reason, a good evolutionary activity is the one that
does not require an audience.

-A good evolutionary interaction is a good “flow”
activity, which means that, among other things, it provides growing challenges
and a clear feedback on one’s improvement. A mistake that many artists make
today is taking the creative freedom too far, emphasizing novelty at the
expense of quality. They lose sight of the challenges inherent in the art form,
thereby losing a standard of “good” art and with it a way to get feedback on
their progress.

-In a good evolutionary interaction, mastery depends on
some generally progressive qualities of a human being; in which one’s general
development finds a direct expression; that by improving in the activity, one
feels that one is developing one’s consciousness in the desired direction. This
also means that in order to take full advantage of an evolutionary activity, it
is not enough to just practice it – one must also refine and cultivate the
right approach to it. To purify an art is to focus on such challenges in it
which relate most directly to what one perceives to be the current direction of
conscious evolution in general.

-A good evolutionary interaction fosters a growing
interchange between conscious awareness and the Unconscious – our evolutionary
future and past, respectively. Ideally, it is a two-way interchange. First, it
means learning how to become more in touch with one’s instincts, how to purify
one’s unconscious, including the deeper levels of manifested as our physical
bodies. Second, it means letting one’s instincts act without the interference
of the conscious mind, which is initially tempted to control everything. Third,
it is developing new instincts through unprecedented interactions, such as the
various already existing and yet to be invented art forms. The latter can be seen
as “implanting” new patterns into the Unconscious, thereby expanding its realm.

-A good evolutionary activity is easily accessible to
most people of a given culture, which means that it does not require
extraordinary expenses or any special childhood training, can be started in
adulthood and practiced until an advanced age – this way it can be chosen
freely and improved throughout one’s life.

-A good evolutionary activity can be improved without
limit not just for the duration of a lifetime, but through generations. Only
then can we know whether the next generation has surpassed or fallen short of
the evolutionary level of the ancestors.

-A good evolutionary interaction is not linked to one’s
survival, sustenance, or social responsibility. In general, all our activities
can be made more and more evolutionary. One can find creative ways to pursue
even the most mundane tasks so that they too play into one’s conscious
evolution. However, to most people who are not yet so free in their learning
and creativity, the circumstances usually feel too limiting. Even in the
first-world countries, most people find that their jobs lack creative
possibilities and do not call for one’s general self-development. Besides, in
one’s work, as well as in one’s social and family life, the consequences of
failure are too great. In a good evolutionary activity, one should be able to
fail or fall short as many times as one needs. This was the biggest reason that
I had to eventually curtail my professional activity as a tango dancer – I felt
that I had fallen into many patterns which were effective for making money with
tango, but counter-productive for true progress in my dancing.

Some cultures of the past understood the value of
self-development through art and other non-utilitarian activities. Of course,
usually, this was practiced by the aristocratic elite, whose sustenance and
comfort was taken care of by others. In pre-revolutionary Russia, for example,
upper-class children were taught to paint, sing, play instruments, speak several
foreign languages with no practical purpose in mind. But it seems that the
clearest understanding of art as the means for self-development was reached in
pre-war Japan, in the practice of Zen-based or other spiritual arts. In his
beautiful book, “Zen in the Art of Archery”, which I quote a number of times in
this website, German philosopher Eugen Herrigel describes his 6-year
apprenticeship with Japanese archery master Awa Kenzo and a resulting
transformation of his whole being which took place. There it was understood
that in order to master the art, the archer had to above all “aim at himself”.
The inventor of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, also based his art on spiritual
principles. Aikido master Mitsugi Saotome writes:

“The purpose of Aikido is to
better people’s lives, to make their spirits blossom and become strong, and by
making better people to make a better world.”

Such insights represent rare intuitive breakthroughs.
Modern culture as a whole does not yet place a high value on conscious
evolution. The mainstream philosophy is pseudo-Darwinian: just try to “get
ahead” of others and you will evolve automatically. But we live in an
increasingly human-made environment, and we should not assume that a better
adjustment to it will lead to our evolution as individuals. Besides, as I have
mentioned already, the “winners” are not having all the offspring anyway. We
must cultivate activities and environments designed specifically for the
purpose of our conscious evolution. The more people engage in them, the more
they use and develop what we consider to be favorable traits. A good starting
point is to recognize which already existing activities have a
good evolutionary potential. An easy indicator of it is if many people keep
wanting to do it just for the sake of the experience. Eventually I realized
that tango is a great evolutionary activity, given the right approach. This is
why, as I realize now, it made such a great initial impression on me, why it
engaged me so completely. I did not conceptualize conscious evolution back
then, but I intuitively perceived that this dance promised extraordinary
experiences.

Why is tango such a good evolutionary activity? Here
are some reasons:

-Tango is primarily about a
beautiful experience. A great advantage of tango as compared to sports or
martial arts is that the beauty of experience, not a competitive advantage, is
its main goal. In fact, tango is a rare non-competitive physical interaction
with another
human being. It is possible to practice sports or martial arts and look
for the beauty of experience, but too often competitive priorities take over.

-Tango is a classic “flow” activity. It has an
unlimited potential for improvement, unlimited creative freedom – people pursue
it literally for decades without exhausting its possibilities; if practiced
correctly, tango has some clear goals and provides immediate feedback; it
requires our full concentration and can make one forget time and everyday
worries.

-Unlike many other modern pursuits, tango involves more
of our whole being – the mind, the body, and, ideally, the spirit. It is a
multi-faceted interaction with time, space, gravity, music, our own physical
nature. Tango is a rare art form that demands the purification of one’s body
conditions. It does not ask for more than good natural movement, but neither
does it settle for anything less! (See Partner Connection and Body Conditioning sections) Given the right approach, it can
teach one what it means to stand and walk well, what it means to purify one’s
physical nature. Because of its multi-faceted nature, tango acts as a great
mirror and training ground for many of our general strengths and weaknesses,
including mental focus, creative attitude, the ability to respond spontaneously
to changing conditions, good body coordination, relaxation, poise,
centeredness, physical and emotional sensitivity to another human being. In
other words, it is a great means for forging a stronger connection between
one’s awareness and one’s unconscious.

-At the core of tango is an interaction with another
human being, which means that each other’s levels of development are
experienced more directly. There is often a direct transmission of certain
aspects between partners which are very difficult to explain in words.

-Tango is accessible to all age groups and economic
classes (an entrance to a dance is cheaper than a couple of drinks at a bar);
it requires no special equipment and no special training since childhood.

-At its best, tango seeks freedom through a higher
degree of awareness, sensitivity, and connectedness, which is an understanding
of freedom that is more advanced than “freedom by separation” (for a fuller
discussion of this see the Partner
Connection section).

-Because of its improvisational nature, tango develops
our capacity for spontaneously appropriate action, which is an important aspect
of more sophisticated interactions, as acknowledged in many advanced martial
arts.

-The fact that so many people
across the globe are fascinated by tango is telling of its evolutionary
potential. On a number of occasions, I have heard, “I would like to learn how
to dance a good tango before I die”. However, the fact that tango does not
enjoy the status of a supreme art form like music or painting, as well as the
fact that relatively small numbers of people dance tango at present, means that
it has not yet been developed to a high enough level.

-Tango is unique as an artistic expression of our
relationship with the opposite sex, which we can’t help enacting with every
step of the dance. It is an opportunity to explore the archetypal level of our
psyche, becoming aware of and creatively transforming our identities and
attitudes as men and women.

Just because I dance tango does not yet mean that I am
evolving. Conscious evolution does not happen automatically. It depends on our
intent to make our pursuits more evolutionary, on the correct approach, which
is to be constantly refined and redefined. Tango may not be the right
evolutionary activity for everyone, but for me it has been functioning as an
instrument of undeniable positive change. Most of what I have experienced fits
more under the definition of therapy. This is another reason that I became
ambivalent about working with tango – I still feel more like a tango “patient”
rather than a tango “doctor”. However, I do believe that therapy is just a
lower side of the spectrum of self-improvement and conscious evolution. The
same principles which restore one’s basic well-being also eventually lead to
more extraordinary ecstatic states and a self-improvement beyond the average of
one’s present civilization. By “therapy” we usually mean a process of bringing
an individual to a generally expected level of mental and/or physical health,
of removing the obstacles to what is considered healthy functioning. But the
standards of healthy functioning can also differ somewhat from person to
person. I have always felt that a healthy individual is the one capable of
gradual improvement in his or her experience, the one who regularly finds him-
or herself in ever intensifying states of flow (when I say that I have always felt
this I do not mean that I was always able to articulate it). For many
frustrating years, I was not able to fulfill that expectation, and I did not
know why. Initially, tango became such a “flow” activity for me – the one that
finally seemed to take root in my unconscious. In that way, it became
immediately therapeutic, for, at least in dancing, my experience was gradually
improving. But tango also became a window on to the obstacles which had been
keeping me from a healthy growth for years. When I began understanding how to
dissolve such general obstacles was when I felt improvements in more than
just the dance. Eventually, it was this same process that also took me past the
“plateau” in my dance experience which had developed after the first several years
of a less-conscious improvement.

The following are just some ways in which tango
dancing has functioned as a means for self-improvement in my life.

-Dancing became a mirror and a training ground for my
general psycho-physical being. The most obvious results were physical – by
working on good standing and walking in order to dance better, I ended up
improving the overall body conditions, eliminating chronic muscular and joint
pains, having more energy and becoming less prone to sickness.

-From both tango and Tai Chi I learned the value of
non-confrontational, effortless approach to an interaction, through listening
to and accompanying the other.

-Relating to a dance partner turned out to be a great
mirror and training ground for other relationships in my life. I began noticing
how my habitual attitudes keep a good interaction from happening, and how
changing them can immediately transform my experience.

-Through tango dancing I have discovered a fascinating
correspondence between psychological and physical patterns: the way I related
to my partners and to the dance as a whole bodily was often a direct expression
of my character. This meant that working one necessarily affected the other.

-The power of intention (see the General Principles section) first
opened to me in partner connection, but began to manifest in many other
relationships and interactions.

-The more intense states of flow in my dancing taught
me how to “flow” better in my interactions with people.

-Above all, trying to improve my dance experience,
reaching for more intense flow states has taught me a lot about the very nature
of consciousness, about the subtle balance and interchange between awareness
and the unconscious. I realized that good art represents an advanced state of
consciousness, in which awareness and the unconscious work in a harmonious
balance to allow for the most spontaneous creativity. (I still only glimpse
such states, but at least I have a good idea of what I am looking for.) Eventually
I understood that the evolution of human consciousness involves not just
becoming aware of new patterns, but also “implanting” new patterns into
the unconscious, essentially developing new instincts. This is what D. T.
Suzuki refers to when he talks about an art “growing out of the Unconscious”.
It is when there is a spontaneous response of one’s whole being to the
circumstances of the moment. As applied to tango dancing, it is when one
becomes so instinctively attuned to the partner, the music, and the space, that
the dancing comes out by itself, before one can even think it. Awareness is
still very active, but conscious choice no longer dominates one’s actions, but
steps aside to allow for a spontaneously appropriate action.

In order to reach and develop higher states of flow,
thereby evolving one’s consciousness, a good approach to an art form
is necessary. This website is mostly about such an approach to tango dancing.
Here I will just outline the main features of it which are most instrumental for
the evolution of consciousness, of developing our patterning ability.

The first and most important principle of the right
approach is to see one’s art form as a means of conscious evolution. This means
not just believing that it can act as such or that it may do it
automatically, but actually seeing how it does it and feeling it happen. It
means finding ways in which an art form acts as an expression of one’s general
manner of interacting with the world, one’s overall manner of being. One’s
artistic process then becomes intertwined with one’s conscious evolution:
gradually purifying and manifesting one’s artistic vision teaches one general
principles of a more evolved state of being, while evolving one’s manner of
being in general in turn improves one’s artistic process. It is important to
constantly refine one’s vision and approach, to continuously purify one’s
practice, so that the relationship between one’s overall being and one’s
artistic process is not interfered with by superfluous concerns.

The conscious mind must realize its right place in the
artistic process. Its primary task is to weed out all thoughts and attitudes
which interfere with one’s direct experience and progress in the art. For
example, a desire to be better than others, to affect others with one’s art, to
leave a mark, etc. must be gradually subdued. Instead, the focus must be
primarily on one’s blissful experience on the practice of the art, but also on
the nature of the particular art form, on some general standards of good art
which anyone is to aspire to, irrespective of personal “style”. One must find
certain standards of freedom on one hand and integrity on the other. In fact,
as I attempt to explain in several different sections, a greater freedom is
usually a consequence of a greater integrity. For example, in tango dancing, a
higher choreographic and musical freedom is enabled by progress in the
integrity of partner connection and body movement.

A good artistic vision presupposes an understanding of
what prevents good art form happening.If one’s heart and one’s senses are open enough, freedom, integrity, and
good art in general want to happen on their own. One must simply get rid of the
obstacles to that process. Mental concepts, preconceived notions must be cut
down to a minimum, in order to let an actual sensory and emotional experience
guide one’s learning. It is for one’s rational mind and one’s senses to
recognize certain obstacles and how to eradicate them, but it is for one’s
senses and one’s heart to know when the right thing is happening. In other
words, a sober self-examination is needed to deconstruct many rigid
counter-productive patterns of one’s body and mind, to open up the way for good
art which is something that is not “constructed” but grows naturally out of our
very being, and which we perceive in an intuitive, less rational way.

In the art of tango dancing, which is usually
practiced in a group setting, it also becomes important to set up the
collective practice in such a way that best caters to everyone’s artistic
process (See The Practice section).

This website is dedicated for the most part to
developing a vision of tango dancing as a means for conscious evolution. It is
my belief that the best art comes largely from this intention, whether directly
or indirectly. It is also my belief that good dancing is accessible to all,
given enough patience and the right approach, which is largely about the
elimination of obstacles. A large part of this website is precisely about the
elimination of obstacles to good dancing, in such aspects as mental attitude,
group practice, body movement, and partner connection. In all of it, it is
important to be patient with oneself and others, not to lose the enjoyment of
the dance behind the “should’s” and “should-not’s”. It is the pleasure that we
take in dancing, our irrational pull to do it that is the root of the best
dancing that we can ever achieve.